Post by jerryfmcompushaft on Sept 11, 2012 15:01:54 GMT -5
Retired Air Force Lt. Col. Woodrow W. Crockett dies; decorated Tuskegee Airman served in World War II, Korean War
Woody Crockett grew up in an Arkansas sharecropping community and aspired to be a mathematician. But in 1940, when he could no longer afford the community college tuition in Little Rock, he decided to join the military.
He enlisted in one of the first black units in what was then the Army Air Corps. Living as a private on a salary of $21 a month, he soon was drawn to a recruitment poster that read: “Be a pilot, bombardier, navigator and earn $245 per month.”
.“It didn’t take too much math to figure that one out,” he told The Washington Post in 2003. “So I went for it.”
Lt. Col. Crockett, who retired from the Air Force in 1970, died Aug. 16 at the Knollwood military retirement community in Washington. He was 93 and had Alzheimer’s disease, said his daughter Marcia Crockett.
During his career, he logged about 5,000 flight hours as a command pilot, including 149 combat missions during World War II and 45 combat missions during the Korean War. Obit
Taps!
Woody Crockett grew up in an Arkansas sharecropping community and aspired to be a mathematician. But in 1940, when he could no longer afford the community college tuition in Little Rock, he decided to join the military.
He enlisted in one of the first black units in what was then the Army Air Corps. Living as a private on a salary of $21 a month, he soon was drawn to a recruitment poster that read: “Be a pilot, bombardier, navigator and earn $245 per month.”
.“It didn’t take too much math to figure that one out,” he told The Washington Post in 2003. “So I went for it.”
Lt. Col. Crockett, who retired from the Air Force in 1970, died Aug. 16 at the Knollwood military retirement community in Washington. He was 93 and had Alzheimer’s disease, said his daughter Marcia Crockett.
During his career, he logged about 5,000 flight hours as a command pilot, including 149 combat missions during World War II and 45 combat missions during the Korean War. Obit
Taps!
